Sundowns co-coach Mokwena targeting African glory

With Mamelodi Sundowns winning the last five DStv Premierships, domestic football has been relatively easy for them. However, the CAF Champions League has continuously been a challenge for them as it's been six years since they last won the prestigious trophy. 

Sundowns will come up against Seychelles side La Passe FC in the second preliminary round, with the first-leg being held at the Loftus Versfeld in Pretoria on Sunday. 

Sundowns co-coach Rhulani Mokwena knows the pressure will be on himself and the players to bring the trophy back home and says it will be a "failure" if they are unsuccessful.  

"It has always been the aim, drive and focus of the club for sure," Mokwena told reporters. 

"From a personal perspective, when we don't get close to that (winning), for me, it's a failure. For sure the club wants to be there and in the space where we are competing and playing to win football matches at that level.

"We'll give it a go again, and try our level best to be in that space to win the trophy. We have to generate our own luck and work very hard to win competitions like the Champions League." 

Despite the Brazilians performing strongly this season, co-coach Mokwena is not taking the relatively unknown Seychelles side for granted and says they have done tireless work to find out more about the opposition.  

"Look, we've already started to get as much information from the opposition as we possibly can.   

"They have quite a few interesting players, from a tactical perspective you can see a very direct team with a lot of physicality because of the profile of the players. 

"We've done our homework; we will prepare and try our best to give the information about the opposition," said Mokwena.   

Kick-off is at 16:00 on Sunday.